When I arrived at church this past Friday morning, I went inside to turn on the lights and set out the bulletins. When I walked into the nave, I was taken aback by the sheer emptiness of the space. Thursday evening’s ritual of stripping the altar had done what it was supposed to do. It helped set the mood for Good Friday, so much so that I profoundly felt the absence of Christ in this space. There was no reserved sacrament in the aumbry. The sanctuary lamp had been extinguished. Christ was hauntingly absent from this place. Before the first word of the Good Friday liturgy was spoken, I had already felt the pang of Christ’s death on the cross.

For me this year, Good Friday did what it was supposed to do. I felt the power of Christ’s death in a way that I had never felt before. This palpable experience of death might also have to with the fact that we buried our beloved friend Tim Harbeson on the day prior to Good Friday. So, this week, death wasn’t just a symbol, or something for us to commemorate. The sting of death happened right here in our midst. And it hurt. The last prayer of the Good Friday service bids God to give mercy and grace to the living, and pardon and rest to the dead. As I read that prayer at the end of the Good Friday service, as well as at the end of the Stations of the Cross, it occurred to me just how much I long for and desperately need God’s mercy and grace while I am still living, as well as God’s pardon and rest when I die. Indeed, for me this year, Good Friday did what it was supposed to do.

And Easter Sunday is already doing what it is supposed to do. The haunting, bare emptiness of this space – the void I felt on Friday and Saturday – has been transformed. There is a power of presence in this place that was not here on Friday. I can hear it, see it, and smell it. In a few moments I will even be able to taste it when I eat the Body and Blood of Christ broken for me and for you.

I share my profound experience of Holy Week with you not to convince you of the efficacy of the Prayer Book liturgies for Holy Week…or to make you feel bad for missing the Maundy Thursday, Good Friday, and Holy Saturday services. I am sharing my experience of Holy Week with you because I believe that there was and is real power in Christ’s death and resurrection. And throughout the centuries the Church has done our best to communicate this power through our scriptures, hymns, liturgies, and traditions. These are important tools for us to employ as we seek to re-member – to put back together – the story of salvation history.

But we must be careful that in our attempt to faithfully tell and re-tell the stories of salvation history, we don’t fall into the trap of domesticating them. Christ’s death and resurrection were not private, religious events whose impact was only on those who were present. St. Matthew tells us that when Jesus died on the cross, “The earth shook and the rocks were split. The tombs also were opened, and many bodies of the saints who had fallen asleep were raised…Now when the centurion and those with him, who were keeping watch over Jesus, saw the earthquake and what took place, they were terrified and said, “Truly this man was God’s Son!” Matthew is describing much more than a tragic death of a martyr. He is describing something much more than a religious, political, or historical event. He was describing a cosmic event – just like the resurrection, the death of Jesus was of cosmic significance. The entire world – past, present, and future – changed when Jesus died and rose from the dead. And the objective power of this fact doesn’t depend upon whether we believe it or not. But, if through the power of the Holy Spirit, we can come to truly believe in and experience the power of Christ’s death and resurrection, our lives will be changed forever – in this life and the next.

So, what does all this talk about the cosmic impact and proportions of the death and resurrection of Christ mean for us today? I think the power of the Christ’s death and resurrection lies in exactly that – power. The events of Holy Week – beginning with Jesus’ Triumphal Entry into Jerusalem a week ago, is all about power – namely, who has real power and who doesn’t. Those who derived their power from worldly, man-made sources– the Caesars and the Herods - tried to silence Jesus and then tried to silence his followers afterwards. They were terrified of his other-worldly power, as well as his ability to empower others.

When commenting on the power of the resurrection, NT Wright asks, “Who after all was it who did not want the dead to be raised? It was not simply the intellectually timid or the rationalists. It was, and is, those in power: the social and intellectual tyrants and bullies; the Caesars who would be threatened by a Lord of the world who had defeated death, the tyrant’s last weapon; the Herods who would be horrified at the postmortem validation of the king of the Jews.”

Holy Week reminds us of the power of God – Who is in control and Whose justice will reign. The powers and principalities of this world – both then and now - shake in their boots when the real source of power shows itself. We have seen this play out in the conflict between Ukraine and Russia. The Ukrainian people are drawing on a power that is much larger and deeper than the sort of power that Putin is trying to wield. And as the world is watching, praying, and helping the people of the Ukraine, we are becoming emboldened by a power that is not afraid of the bullets and bombs of a tyrant.

The power of God can be terrifying to those who resist it because its source is God himself. And God’s power cannot be contained by the Church or the state. This power is a cosmic power, not a worldly one. As Jesus said when he was being questioned by Pilate, “My kingdom is not from the world.”

As Christians, we are first and foremost an Easter people. Rather than resisting or being afraid of this power, we are called to submit to it, to embrace it, and to embody it. And that is when we will be able to fully participate in the work of God’s kingdom here on earth – God’s kingdom here and now, where

The wolf and the lamb shall feed together,
the lion shall eat straw like the ox…

They shall not hurt or destroy
on [the Lord’s] holy mountain.

As our collect for today says, we are called to “celebrate with joy the day of the Lord’s resurrection.” But this joy isn’t to be grounded in sentimentality. It is to be grounded in the cosmic, world-changing power of God who raised Jesus from the dead. And let us join with the psalmist in proclaiming,

"The right hand of the Lord has triumphed! *
the right hand of the Lord is exalted!
the right hand of the Lord has triumphed!"

This is the Lord's doing, *
and it is marvelous in our eyes.

 On this day the Lord has acted; *
we will rejoice and be glad in it.”

Maundy Thursday – April 14, 2022

Sermon by Emily Rose Proctor

Christ the King Episcopal Church

Santa Rosa Beach, FL

John 13:1-17, 31b-35

Jesus must have known that some of us would need more than words to understand what he was trying to do. 

I mean, we need words too, and he gave us good ones: “I give you a new commandment, that you love one another. Just as I have loved you…”

But he must have known that some of us would need more than that.  Don’t just tell us.  Show us.  Give us a good visual.  Give us something we can touch, something we can feel.  Then maybe we’ll remember.  Hit us with all our senses, and maybe it will sink in…

So, on the eve of his betrayal and arrest, Jesus gave his disciples—and us—two things.  Two things to remember, two things to do: dinner and bath.  See this is what you get when you let a mother of two small children into the pulpit.  But hear me out…

He leaves his disciples with two experiences that, on the one hand, they are already very familiar with.  Two things they are likely to experience again.  A meal together and a foot washing—only he transforms them with his presence. 

In the gospel of John, the focus is more on the foot washing than the meal.  For us, foot washing isn’t really a thing that happens outside of Maundy Thursday services and nail salons.

For the disciples, it was something that would have happened frequently, but usually upon entering a house—not in the middle of a meal—and the disciples would have washed their own feet.  Maybe if you were wealthy enough, or your host was, you might have an extremely devoted servant do it for you. 

But even in our context, it’s not that hard to recreate the resistance welling up inside, as it surely must have done with the disciples that night when Jesus started making the rounds with the basin and the towel.

Only Peter, bless his heart, was unfiltered enough to vocalize it.  “Lord, are you going to wash my feet?” Never.

For starters, it’s a little beneath Jesus, right?  I mean you don’t see many CEOs cleaning the toilets or taking out the trash.  Part of the benefit of being the boss, the professor, the President, the surgeon, is that you get to have other people do the dirty stuff, the menial stuff.  I mean, even dentists now barely have to touch your teeth.  They pay someone else to clean them before they even have a look!  But apparently that is not how God—revealed to us in Christ Jesus—operates.

It started with the incarnation, right?  Jesus laid aside his heavenly garments and put on the towel of human flesh.  Not coincidentally, the verbs John uses to describe Jesus laying aside his outer garment and taking up his towel are the same ones that the gospel writer used to describe Jesus laying down and taking up his life in John 10.  Jesus keeps laying aside power, prestige, condemnation, and taking up humility, suffering, mercy…

It's more than a little uncomfortable, isn’t?  The way God is with us…in scripture… in real life.  It’s too close. It’s too personal. It’s too subversive.  It’s too much.

We have so many reasons to object to this kind of intimate encounter with God. To resist the Christ…or anyone else…washing our feet. Somehow, foot washing seems to draw right out our hesitation to being vulnerable in the presence of God—to being dependent on a God who sees every wart and flaw.

See if any of these objections sound like something you might say, when it comes to foot washing (or perhaps to any experience that might render you vulnerable and dependent):

I prefer to just watch, thanks.

I promise, you do NOT want to see, smell or touch what’s underneath these socks.

How about I just wash your feet.

I don’t think you understand how super sensitive my feet are.

Uh-uh—only if I get to pick the other person.

Can someone please explain to me again what the point of this is?

How about I just wash my own feet.

If only you would do it this other way…

If we’re honest, most of our objections to foot washing are about us wanting to be in control and NOT wanting to be vulnerable. Allowing our feet to be washed is something we can only do if we allow ourselves to trust the other person.  And so what Jesus is asking his followers to do—not just with their words, but with their whole selves—is to trust him, to trust God completely.  And then to create the kind of community where we can trust each other in the same way.

Do you hear how radical that is?  How counter-cultural?  I mean, who trusts anyone these days?  There’s fake news and fake news about fake news.  There are pre-nups and non-disclosure clauses and safety nets and malware protection software and identity theft insurance and the dark web and ransomware and conspiracy theories run wild. 

The people of God mostly wanted a warrior king to ride in, drive out the Roman Army, and restore Jewish sovereignty. Instead, Jesus put on the equivalent of an apron and starts washing their feet. What do you think would happen if every legislative session or Supreme court hearing began with a foot washing? Could they do it? Can we do it?

Some of us may balk at having our feet literally washed tonight, but I know there are some foot washers among us.  I know because they’ve brought us a meal or offered to watch our kids.  I know because I’ve seen them dusting pews, pressure washing the church on a Saturday, carefully arranging flowers for the altar, folding palm crosses and stuffing easter eggs.

But the thing about the way Jesus washed his disciples’ feet is that it isn’t just about serving others. Because some of us are good at serving because it’s how we hide, or avoid pain, or make ourselves look or feel good.

First and foremost, Jesus’ washing his disciples’ feet was about allowing God into the most intimate parts of our lives, trusting God with the most vulnerable parts of ourselves, and experiencing that incredible combination of being seen completely and still being loved and cared for that is life-transforming. It was about experiencing a God would get down on God’s knees and wash the feet of those who would deny, abandon, betray and not understand him.

Sometimes I think one of the hardest parts of my job as the Director of Outreach at Caring and Sharing of South Walton is that I don’t really know the whole stories of those we are helping. I see only in part.

A lot of the time we don’t really know what combination of trauma, bad luck, generational poverty, systemic injustice, addiction, mental illness, abuse, racism and poor choices have led to the kinds of crises our clients experience.  We help as much as we can, as best we can with limited information and resources.  I wish sometimes that people came with lights that would flash specific colors if they were dealing with addiction or domestic violence or mental illness.  Not so that we could avoid helping them, but so that we could help them better. 

But we never really know the whole truth about anyone.  And that’s true for our encounters with most everyone, really.  I sit next to you in the pew, but I don’t really know you.  Most of us only know the most visible and public parts of each other’s stories. And most of us try to only show our good sides.

But occasionally the harder parts of someone’s story are a tad more visible. For example, the other day we had someone come into Caring and Sharing with a giant swastika tattooed on their neck and a criminal history that had been all over the news.  I had to leave early that day, so I heard about it second hand.

But it has since occurred to me that although most of us may do a pretty good job most of the time hiding our sins, addictions, traumas and brokenness from the public, in God’s eyes they probably look a lot like giant neck tattoos. 

God knows about our drinking, our passive aggressive ways, our judginess, our self-loathing. 

God knows about our small-mindedness, our laziness, our avoidance of other people’s pain, our obsession with our bodies. 

God knows about our selfishness, our greed, our emotional affairs, our drinking.  God knows about our sick fantasies, our racist tendencies, our shallowness, our self-righteousness. 

God knows how we love to play the victim and blame others for all our problems or pretend like there are no problems, no problems here... God knows about the pills. God knows about the gossip.

God knows about the way we use others, how we make idols out of our own security and comfort, how we create false images of ourselves on Instagram or with plastic surgery or the stories we tell or never tell.

God knows about the binging and the exercise addiction and the days we didn’t get out of bed or pulled our hair out and the times we yelled at our kids or worse.

God knows about all the prayers we didn’t say, and the prayers that were all about us, the songs we sang but didn’t mean.  God sees all our brokenness and all our BS as if it were tattooed on our necks.

And what does God do with all this intimate, damning knowledge?  God kneels down and cradles our smelly, dirty, ugly sin-tattooed feet in his hands and he washes them and dries them with a towel.

God invites us to the table, the very people who will betray, deny, abandon him, and God takes the bread and breaks it and gives it to us, saying, this is my body, given for you.

God bathes us with his presence.  God feeds us with God’s very own life.  And it is only by receiving it that we are transformed.

Maybe that’s why Jesus said that if you want to enter the kingdom you must be like a little child.  Children know what it is to receive—they are accustomed to being washed and fed by someone they trust completely. 

May we too be like little children tonight.  May the living God in Christ wash us of everything that keeps us from God and one another.  And may the bread of life that is Christ’s love for us fill every hunger, every empty place.

And then, washed cleaned and filled to the brim with love, let us go and do likewise—really seeing those we serve. Let us serve one another in ways that subvert traditional hierarchies and power structures.  Let us see each other through the lens of our own forgiven-ness. 

The Rev’d Richard Gillespie Proctor

CtK Episcopal Church

5 Lent, Year C - John 12: 1-8

4.3.22

What is an appropriate way to thank somebody for raising you – or someone you love – from the dead?

Well, if Lazarus, Mary, and Martha were anything like you or me, they had never been faced with this sort of question before, and were probably a little dumbfounded with the question of what to do for Jesus, who had just raised Lazarus from the dead. 

Apparently, they decided that the best thing that they could do was to host an intimate dinner party for Jesus and one of his friends. And for those of us who have hosted a party before, we all know that one of the most difficult things to do is to narrow down the guest list. How many people should we invite? Where and at whom do we cut off the list?

Lazarus, Mary, and Martha obviously decided – whether for practical reasons or not – to keep the list small, and just invite Jesus and a friend.  Now if Jesus had been married, or if he had a significant other, the friend part would have been easy. “Jesus, we’d like for you and your wife to join us for dinner.” But as far as we know, Jesus didn’t have a wife or a significant other, so perhaps they just simply said, “Jesus, we’d to have you over for dinner…bring a friend…maybe one of your disciples.”

And of all of Jesus’ friends and disciples to choose from, isn’t it odd that Jesus invited Judas. I wonder what Lazarus, Mary, and Martha thought, when they were expecting Jesus to show up with Peter or James or John, when he instead showed up with Judas Iscariot. But we all know that Jesus was drawn to the outsider. And of the twelve disciples, Judas was becoming just that – the one on the periphery. Perhaps Jesus invited him to give him the opportunity to be with three people who had seen, experienced, and been transformed by resurrection. Perhaps it was Judas who needed it the most.

Last week, we heard the parable of the Prodigal Son, where the deeper issue that the older son faced wasn’t his anger and resentment but his inability to recognize new life when he saw it. He came face-to-face with resurrection, and he missed it entirely.  The father, on the other hand, had done the hard work of working through his anger and grief so that when resurrection finally entered into his midst, he was ready to embrace it.

So perhaps Jesus used this dinner party as an opportunity to expose Judas to light in the midst of darkness. Life out of death. A new creation. 

I find it interesting that in our story today, two people remain completely silent – Lazarus and Martha. But the fact that we hear nothing from Lazarus or Martha tells me that this story isn’t supposed to be about them. It is about Mary and Judas, and how they respond to resurrection, and how they respond to God in their midst.

Mary responds with what Judas – and what many of us – would call wasteful extravagance. And I think that on one hand, Judas asks a fair question. The amount of perfume that Mary used to anoint Jesus’ feet would cost what would amount to about 10 months’ pay for a common worker or soldier. So, we can’t immediately throw Judas under the bus for raising an eyebrow at such extravagance. One of the critiques of the Church today includes the hypocrisy of proclaiming how we care for the poor while we spend so much money on buildings, infrastructure, salaries, and pensions.

This reminds me of an annual parish meeting that we had at Epiphany Episcopal - the church I attended when I lived in Atlanta. After the presentation of the annual budget, the Rector opened up the floor for questions or comments. This situation provided me with one of the best learning moments I have ever had in church. A parishioner stood up and said, “When my wife and I are trying to decide which charitable organizations we should donate to each year, we make our decision based on the percentage of the donations that actually go to the mission of the organization itself versus the percentage that goes towards overhead and administration.” He had a number that he gave as the benchmark for what was a worthy organization to donate to – say, $.90 of every $1.00 must go directly to the mission itself. He then went on to say, “Based on this criteria for our charitable giving, we should NOT be giving to Epiphany. Only 10% of Epiphany’s annual budget goes towards outreach and mission. And look at all of this overhead –buildings, maintenance, salaries! This budget is an absolute disaster, and my wife and I are going to have to think really hard about whether or not we will continue to give to this church. Nobody who knows anything about charitable giving would see Epiphany’s budget and deem it a worthy cause to give to.” 

I remember thinking to myself that this was a pretty good observation – like the one Judas had made about the perfume - and I was glad that the man had the courage to stand up and mention it to the rector in from of the whole congregation. I’ll also never forget the answer that the rector gave. 

He said, “You are absolutely correct. If you are looking to donate money to a charitable organization, we are a horrible choice. And I’d recommend that you donate elsewhere. But the thing is – we are NOT a charitable organization. We are a church. We are the living body of Christ in the world – flawed, broken, yet committed to following Christ and allowing our encounters with Christ to transform us, so that we can then share the love of Christ with our neighbors. We baptize, confirm, educate, and nurture our children as they navigate childhood and adolescence towards young adulthood. If and when they find a life partner, we counsel them and invite them into the sacrament of marriage, covenanting to support and nurture them in their life together. We administer the sacraments – visible signs of God in our midst. We visit the sick, the elderly, and the lonely. When people die, we proclaim that death doesn’t have the last word as we celebrate their life and the resurrection. And hopefully we do many more things for a whole host of folks - both inside and outside our walls – throughout all the stages of their lives. But no, we are NOT a charitable, social service organization. And the minute that is all that the church becomes is the minute that I will quit being a priest.” I don’t know if that man who asked the question was satisfied, but I sure was.

I don’t think that the Prodigal Son’s older brother, or Judas, or that man at Epiphany were inherently bad people. I even think that they asked fair questions. Their flaws were that they were too busy counting. They were too busy keeping score. And while they were trying so hard to determine what was fair or prudent or even righteous, they failed to recognize God in their midst. After all, hadn’t that man at Epiphany just finished taking communion at the worship service prior to the annual meeting? Hadn’t he tasted the living God just minutes before? New life – resurrection - was staring him, the older brother, and Judas straight in the eyes, yet they saw right through it in their search for another sort of righteousness.

We have noted that this Lenten journey is among many things a journey of transformation. Our Lenten practices and disciplines shouldn’t be an end, but a means that stimulates growth and transformation. While the Prodigal son and his father were deeply transformed by their respective journeys, the older son remained stuck, and never experienced transformation.  Mary went from being mad at Jesus for not healing Lazarus when he was sick to dropping to her knees and in an act of wasteful, extravagant love, anointing the feet of Jesus with a pound of expensive ointment. She experienced resurrection in her brother Lazarus. And she was able to see the source of that resurrection when it came in her midst. If she had had two, three, or four pounds of ointment, I have no doubt that she would have used it all on Jesus, because she wasn’t keeping count. 

By embracing his wayward son, and by celebrating with an extravagant party, the prodigal’s father was inviting his older son to see, feel, and taste resurrection. By inviting Judas to accompany him at Mary, Martha, and Lazarus’ house, Jesus was inviting Judas to see, feel, taste, even smell resurrection. But Judas didn’t make room in his inner self to be transformed by this encounter. Like the older brother, he remained stuck.  And if you’re like me, it is easy to get caught up in keeping score. It is easy to get stuck.  Hopefully for us, as we draw nearer to the passion of our Lord Jesus Christ; as we draw nearer to Golgotha, and we draw nearer to the tomb, our Lenten journey will have prepared us so that when the stone is rolled away, we might see, feel, taste, and smell new life in our midst.

The Rev’d Richard Gillespie Proctor

CtK Episcopal Church

3 Lent, Year C; 3.20.22

As we draw near to the mid-way point through our Lenten journey, we are given scripture lessons that invite us to wrestle with the age-old question about connection between sin and suffering. Beginning in ancient times, and continuing to the present day, many people have often attributed illness and calamity to punishment for one’s behavior. And on the other side, people have been wont to attribute good health and prosperity as reward to for their good behavior.

Well I have some good news and some bad news for us today. Since it is Lent, I’ll start with the bad news. The bad news is that no matter how good we are – or how good we think we are – we will always fall short of being good enough to merit the love, mercy, and grace that God gives us. The good news is that in the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus, we are all made worthy of God’s love, mercy, and grace.

The message that Jesus has for us in our Gospel lesson is this – “Get over yourselves, and quit trying to play like you are God. Quit trying to convince yourselves that you are in control of everyone’s salvation” Or in Jesus’ own words, “Unless you repent, you too will perish.”

Jesus says this to the people who approached him with the news of some Galileans who had been executed by Pilate’s regime. Jesus goes on to refer to the 18 Jews who had died the tower of Siloam collapsed. At that time, a number of Jews attributed the death of those 18 to God’s punishment – since they were working for the Roman government to build the tower, which was being paid for by money from the Temple.

Whether it was these 18 people or the others who were executed by Pilate’s regime, the people in this passage are coming to Jesus looking for answers to the tragic deaths of their brethren. And as is oftentimes the case with anxious people in anxious systems, they start with blame. Whose fault is it? Who can we blame? What behavior can we blame? How can we make sense of this tragedy in a simple, cause-and-effect way?

We saw this sort of behavior early on with the HIV/AIDS epidemic, when the disease was blamed on the behavior of those who contracted it. We saw it with Hurricane Katrina, where we heard things like, “Sin city had it coming sooner or later.” More recently, we saw it with the covid-19 pandemic, when folks blamed it on China.

Whether it is those who were looking for answers in their conversation with Jesus, or those of us today trying to make sense of tragedies that befall us, Jesus’ response is for us to quit pointing fingers, quit blaming others, and for all of us to take a long, hard look at ourselves. Regarding the tragedy at the Tower of Siloam, Jesus’ response was, “do you think that they were worse offenders than all the others living in Jerusalem? No, I tell you; but unless you repent, you will all perish just as they did."

We are given this passage during the season of Lent because this is the time of year when we are invited to examine ourselves, and to repent – to turn back around towards God. And this is hard work. It can make us uncomfortable. Not many people look forward to spending 40 days prayerfully examining where they might have gone astray; or what idols have crept into our lives; or how we have may neglected to love God and our neighbor.

But as I have said before, the gift of this season is that we don’t spend this time of self-examination in a vacuum or silo. We do it together in our church community. There is comfort in the fact that the person to my right and the person to my left aren’t worried about me and the ways I might have fallen short because they are too busy examining themselves.

But please, don’t fall into the trap of believing that our repenting – our turning around back to God – is an inoculation or vaccination against illness, tragedy, or death. Jesus makes this clear in our lesson today. Jim Rice reminds us that “the tragedy that befell the workers at the Tower of Siloam was in no way related to their moral state. And despite the temptation to believe otherwise, the same is true for us today.”

Today’s Gospel lesson ends with Jesus framing the call to repentance with hope. Jesus tells a quick parable about a man and his fig tree. He is annoyed that after three years, the tree hasn’t produced any fruit. So, he asks his gardener to cut it down. But the gardener convinces the man to give the tree one more year. The gardener knows that tree much better than the man who owns it. The gardener sees it and waters it every day. And though it hasn’t yet born any fruit, he believes that it will. He’s not ready to give up.

When I think of this parable, it is difficult for me to not equate the landowner – the person who owns the vineyard – with God. After all, the vineyard owner is the boss; he is the one to whom the gardener reports. So why wouldn’t we think of God as the landowner - the “boss” - in this story? But in my sanctified imagination, it is the gardener in this parable who most resembles God to me. The gardener knows the fig tree; he waters and fertilizes it; he trims it; he knows every branch. And day in and day out he sees that it is not bearing fruit as it should. But rather than being impatient and irritated with it like the vineyard owner is, he has an abiding hope in this fig tree. He asks the landowner for more time, because he believes that the fig tree, with more time to be nurtured with water and fertilizer, will finally grow into the tree that it was created to be. The reason he has more patience for the tree than the landowner is that he has a relationship with it. He sees it and tends to it every day. Dare I say that he loves the tree, and hopes against all evidence that it will in due time flourish.

This gardener is how I imagine God. God knows us because God created us in God’s very own image. And God – against all evidence to the contrary – hopes and believes that we too will one day bear fruit in the way that God intends us to do. But we need more time. We need the season of Lent to reorient ourselves back towards God. We need to be watered and fertilized with God’s Word and sacraments.

The disciplines we take on during the season of Lent – prayer, fasting, spiritual reading, almsgiving, and repentance – aren’t for their own sake. Their purpose isn’t to make us so pious that God will love us more. God already loves us more! And they certainly won’t earn us salvation. And as I mentioned earlier, they won’t protect us from illness, disease, or disaster. So, what is the purpose of repentance? I think one purpose is so that our relationships with God and our neighbors will begin to bear fruit. As such, we are living into our baptismal calling to be co-creators…participants with God in ushering in God’s reign here on earth. Such a life is one that bears fruit – that embodies and shares the Good News that, as our psalmist says today, “God’s loving-kindness is better than life itself.”

God’s Hidden Work in the World, Lent 2 (C) – 2022

While it may be hard to imagine what life for Abraham was like, or even whether he was only a patriarchal ideal in the Old Testament, a careful reading of the passage from Genesis connects us to him with a contemporary question: how can we see God’s promises at work in the world and be sure of their fulfillment?

There is so much that makes us question God’s promises that God’s will is at work.  The twenty-four-hour news cycle carries with it death, mayhem, and dishonesty, so much that we despair of anything ever being different.  For Abraham, it was the despair of not having any offspring.  While this may seem archaic, it was the faith of people that their offspring, their blood heirs, assured them of an identity and the promise of a future.  That faith was also grounded in land, a place that would be theirs that could be passed on to their children.  It was an agrarian faith that still exists in many parts of the world.

For many of us who read or watch events march across our TV and tablet screens, the question is, will there even be a better world for our children to inherit?

But God makes promises to each of us, and there are two that are particular to us as we observe the season of Lent.  The first is that we are all children of Abraham, and therefore inheritors of the promise, a covenant that God will always be our God, and our lives will be bound together with each other and our Creator and Redeemer.

The second promise is the gift of Jesus, God’s son, who is our assurance of salvation and life eternal.  We are baptized into his death and resurrection, and we are reminded of that each Sunday when we hear “the unchangeable truth of [his] Word” (from today’s opening collect) and then experience that promise when we partake of Jesus’ risen body and blood at Communion.

Lent is a time of repentance, and we often take that to be a time for self-examination and renewal.  The Gospel assures us of an encounter with the Divine as we do that and strengthens us to withstand the assaults of the enemies of the cross of Christ, as the letter of the Philippians tells us.  A large part of our Lenten repentance is the rejection of those enemies of the cross, avoiding the incessant focus on bad news and wicked and inept people.

St. Paul, author of Philippians, tells us to remember where our true citizenship is and where we expect our help to come from.  Then we have to start living like we believe it as we encourage one another along the way.  The early Christians were courageous people; they had to be.  There is no reason we cannot imitate them.

Now, let us turn to the actions that help us imitate our Christian forbears as we struggle to free ourselves from the world’s focus on chaotic living that leads only to death.

Jesus leads the way.  In the Gospel reading from Luke for today, he is confronted with the fear of what Herod might do.  There is no question that Jesus had already been seen as a threat to Herod’s temporal power. Eventually, Herod will be so fearful of Jesus that he will avoid a direct confrontation and send him to Pilate to handle the problem instead.

Jesus stands his ground, assured that he is doing God’s business, “casting out demons and performing cures today and tomorrow.”  Do you know that helping to feed others is casting out the demon of hunger and want?  So whenever you provide a meal or some groceries for someone, you are rejecting the world’s demonic tyranny that demands lower taxes often by reduced support for those among us who have no helper.

Do you know that when you offer prayer for someone who is sick, alone or overwhelmed, you reject the world’s implicit message that only the strong and powerful will inherit?  That whenever you listen, just listen, to someone who is trying to sort out a problem or recover from a broken relationship, you are offering pastoral care in the name of Jesus, who always takes time for his children, even when others reject them as hapless or hopeless.

Doing actions like these brings that prophetic hope to people who need it, and we do these acts in the firm conviction that by bringing the Good News to others, we are bringing God’s promises into the world.

Here, in summary, are some best practices that help us to connect with God’s promises as we wait the day of Christ’s coming again in glory:

Connect yourself with a faith community that practices ministry to people outside of it as much as to those within it.  Both are important, but vitality exists when the promises of God reach beyond the doors of a Church. 

Look for opportunities to serve others.  Ask God each day what the plan God has for you is – and be prepared to be surprised at what opportunities to minister to others come your way.  If you are not able to volunteer outside of your home, perhaps you can arrange a phone visit or write a card to someone, so they know they are cared for.

Refuse to watch the news when it becomes disturbing to you.  We are powerless over much of what happens, but we often let it take control of our lives, and we lose our focus when we do.

Search for stories of Good News.  They are often in the feature section of newspapers (if you are still able to get one) or in feature stories on television.  You have to look for them, but they are there, brimming with accounts of courage and leadership changing our world for the better.

Focus your charitable giving on things (or one thing) that you perceive is making an impact on the lives of others, including the world of nature that is under so much stress.  You will feel a sense of connection with God’s creation outside of your immediate sphere. You will also be helping to bring God’s work into the world.

These suggestions are some ways you can help with what one of our former presiding bishops refers to as God’s project.  The more we become part of it in our mission and ministry, the more we see its unfolding.

Lent is a time to take heart, to bear one another’s burdens with grace and care, to take care of ourselves so that we are strong for others, and to be witnesses to the promises made to Abraham, the patriarchs, matriarchs, and prophets who came before us.  An old hymn summarizes it well:

“God is working his purpose out,
as year succeeds to year,
God is working his purpose out,
and the time is drawing near;
nearer and nearer draws the time,
the time that shall surely be,
when the earth shall be filled with the glory of God
as the waters cover the sea.”

The Rev’d Richard G. Proctor, OA

CtK Episcopal Church

1 Lent, Year C; 3.6.22

Historically speaking, the three pillars of Lent are prayer, fasting, and almsgiving. And the Episcopal Churches of which I have been a part in my lifetime have typically done a good job of lifting up the first two pillars – prayer and fasting. It was and still is common for us to make a concerted effort to be more faithful in our prayer lives during Lent. We might commit to attending church every week if that is something that we normally don’t do. Or we might decide to pray the Daily Office, read a Lenten devotional book, or perhaps even pick up a new practice like Centering Prayer. And whether we actually follow through with it or not for the entirety of Lent, the expectation and intent is there. During Lent, we have been taught that this is a good time to re-orient our lives and priorities towards prayer and worship.

The Church has also have done a good job of holding up the Lenten pillar of fasting throughout history. Perhaps that is the #1 pillar on our consciousness – as were are so apt to ask “What are you giving up for Lent this year?” We actually might find it easier to give up something like meat on Fridays, chocolate, or alcohol than to commit to daily prayer and weekly worship attendance. And, depending on what you choose to give up, the results might be more immediately gratifying and noticeable than the slow, steady effect that a rhythm of daily prayer and weekly worship can have upon us.

Of course, if we do both – commit to a deeper life of prayer and engage in the holy discipline of fasting, we will likely be well on our way to more meaningful relationships with both God, our neighbors, and ourselves.

But what about the third pillar of Lent? What about almsgiving? Interestingly, in the Book of Common Prayer’s service for Ash Wednesday, we are invited to observe Lent “by self-examination and repentance; by prayer, fasting, and self-denial; and by reading and meditating on God’s holy Word.” All good things. And the first two historical pillars of Lent – prayer and fasting – are certainly there. But what about almsgiving? Why isn’t it mentioned?

Has almsgiving – or charitable giving to the poor – become less of a priority – whether it is in Lent or not - in the modern and post-modern church? Or is it perhaps such a large priority of ours that giving money to the poor just goes without saying, and shouldn’t be to relegated to just the 40 days of Lent? I think that both cases can be argued.

What I am most curious about is why almsgiving is no longer listed as a Lenten discipline in the Book of Common Prayer. And I’m curious as to how we might recover this discipline as something to prayerfully wrestle with during the holy season of Lent. This year, our annual stewardship campaign has fallen during the   Lenten season. Might our commitment to prayer and fasting inform our commitment to almsgiving – both to the church and to others? Some of the largest and most difficult decisions we make in a given year have to do with money. How might we use this season that is focused on prayer and fasting to help inform these important financial decisions?

The common thread running through the disciplines of prayer, fasting, and almsgiving is how we prioritize the choices we make. Praying more – or praying differently - involves reordering how we prioritize our time. Eating and drinking with more intentionality involves prioritizing our needs over our desires. And how we choose to spend our money also involves a re-orientation of priorities. The 17th-century English poet and priest John Donne noted that our first call as Christians is to address the poverty within our own selves before we can expect to address the poverty that is around us. Once we are transformed by a renewed commitment to prayer and fasting, we will inevitably hear God’s call to share the fruit that our good, faithful work has generated.

Today’s lesson from Deuteronomy frames the discipline of almsgiving within the context of holy memory and gratitude. The abundant blessings of God that the Israelites were enjoying in the land of Canaan were to be shared first, and then enjoyed. And when the Israelites presented the first fruits of their harvest to the priest, they were to recite the freedom story of their ancestors by memory - “The Lord brought us out of Egypt with a mighty hand and an outstretched arm, with a terrifying display of power, and with signs and wonders; and he brought us into this place and gave us this land, a land flowing with milk and honey. So now I bring the first of the fruit of the ground that you, O Lord, have given me.”

Notice that the gift back to God is to be grounded in gratitude, not shame or guilt. Somehow, through the centuries, the season of Lent and practice of almsgiving  have taken on – whether intentional or not – a hint of shame and guilt. But that is not the idea or the point. The ashes we receive on our foreheads at Ash Wednesday are celebration and reminder of the fact that when God created us out of dust, God created us in his very own image. And the ashes on our foreheads are our public affirmation that we are working on living into that image more faithfully. Like the Israelites’ gift of the first fruits of their harvest, our ashes are a mark of holy remembering and gratitude, not shame and guilt.

But the reading from Deuteronomy doesn’t end with the gift being placed on the altar and the recitation of the story. It goes on to say, “Then you, together with the Levites and the aliens who reside among you, shall celebrate with all the bounty that the Lord your God has given to you and to your house.” So, the holy gift of almsgiving ends up being not just a sacrifice on the altar. It ends up being bounty that is shared with the Israelites, the Levites, and all the aliens who resided in the Promised Land. Somehow, there was enough to go around. Somehow, it all worked out, for everybody – even those outside of their religious community.

Almsgiving – whether in ancient Israel or in our context here today – doesn’t have to be grounded in guilt, shame, or what we “ought to do.” If we frame it within the holy disciplines of prayer and fasting, and if we ground it in gratitude for who God is and what God has done for not only us but those who came before us, almsgiving can become a joyful practice for us as individuals and us as a community. “Then [we], together with those who reside in our community and beyond, shall celebrate with all the bounty that the Lord our God has given to us and to our house.”

Historically speaking, the three pillars of Lent are prayer, fasting, and almsgiving. And the Episcopal Churches of which I have been a part in my lifetime have typically done a good job of lifting up the first two pillars – prayer and fasting. It was and still is common for us to make a concerted effort to be more faithful in our prayer lives during Lent. We might commit to attending church every week if that is something that we normally don’t do. Or we might decide to pray the Daily Office, read a Lenten devotional book, or perhaps even pick up a new practice like Centering Prayer. And whether we actually follow through with it or not for the entirety of Lent, the expectation and intent is there. During Lent, we have been taught that this is a good time to re-orient our lives and priorities towards prayer and worship.

The Church has also have done a good job of holding up the Lenten pillar of fasting throughout history. Perhaps that is the #1 pillar on our consciousness – as were are so apt to ask “What are you giving up for Lent this year?” We actually might find it easier to give up something like meat on Fridays, chocolate, or alcohol than to commit to daily prayer and weekly worship attendance. And, depending on what you choose to give up, the results might be more immediately gratifying and noticeable than the slow, steady effect that a rhythm of daily prayer and weekly worship can have upon us.

Of course, if we do both – commit to a deeper life of prayer and engage in the holy discipline of fasting, we will likely be well on our way to more meaningful relationships with both God, our neighbors, and ourselves.

But what about the third pillar of Lent? What about almsgiving? Interestingly, in the Book of Common Prayer’s service for Ash Wednesday, we are invited to observe Lent “by self-examination and repentance; by prayer, fasting, and self-denial; and by reading and meditating on God’s holy Word.” All good things. And the first two historical pillars of Lent – prayer and fasting – are certainly there. But what about almsgiving? Why isn’t it mentioned?

Has almsgiving – or charitable giving to the poor – become less of a priority – whether it is in Lent or not - in the modern and post-modern church? Or is it perhaps such a large priority of ours that giving money to the poor just goes without saying, and shouldn’t be to relegated to just the 40 days of Lent? I think that both cases can be argued.

What I am most curious about is why almsgiving is no longer listed as a Lenten discipline in the Book of Common Prayer. And I’m curious as to how we might recover this discipline as something to prayerfully wrestle with during the holy season of Lent. This year, our annual stewardship campaign has fallen during the   Lenten season. Might our commitment to prayer and fasting inform our commitment to almsgiving – both to the church and to others? Some of the largest and most difficult decisions we make in a given year have to do with money. How might we use this season that is focused on prayer and fasting to help inform these important financial decisions?

The common thread running through the disciplines of prayer, fasting, and almsgiving is how we prioritize the choices we make. Praying more – or praying differently - involves reordering how we prioritize our time. Eating and drinking with more intentionality involves prioritizing our needs over our desires. And how we choose to spend our money also involves a re-orientation of priorities. The 17th-century English poet and priest John Donne noted that our first call as Christians is to address the poverty within our own selves before we can expect to address the poverty that is around us. Once we are transformed by a renewed commitment to prayer and fasting, we will inevitably hear God’s call to share the fruit that our good, faithful work has generated.

Today’s lesson from Deuteronomy frames the discipline of almsgiving within the context of holy memory and gratitude. The abundant blessings of God that the Israelites were enjoying in the land of Canaan were to be shared first, and then enjoyed. And when the Israelites presented the first fruits of their harvest to the priest, they were to recite the freedom story of their ancestors by memory - “The Lord brought us out of Egypt with a mighty hand and an outstretched arm, with a terrifying display of power, and with signs and wonders; and he brought us into this place and gave us this land, a land flowing with milk and honey. So now I bring the first of the fruit of the ground that you, O Lord, have given me.”

Notice that the gift back to God is to be grounded in gratitude, not shame or guilt. Somehow, through the centuries, the season of Lent and practice of almsgiving  have taken on – whether intentional or not – a hint of shame and guilt. But that is not the idea or the point. The ashes we receive on our foreheads at Ash Wednesday are celebration and reminder of the fact that when God created us out of dust, God created us in his very own image. And the ashes on our foreheads are our public affirmation that we are working on living into that image more faithfully. Like the Israelites’ gift of the first fruits of their harvest, our ashes are a mark of holy remembering and gratitude, not shame and guilt.

But the reading from Deuteronomy doesn’t end with the gift being placed on the altar and the recitation of the story. It goes on to say, “Then you, together with the Levites and the aliens who reside among you, shall celebrate with all the bounty that the Lord your God has given to you and to your house.” So, the holy gift of almsgiving ends up being not just a sacrifice on the altar. It ends up being bounty that is shared with the Israelites, the Levites, and all the aliens who resided in the Promised Land. Somehow, there was enough to go around. Somehow, it all worked out, for everybody – even those outside of their religious community.

Almsgiving – whether in ancient Israel or in our context here today – doesn’t have to be grounded in guilt, shame, or what we “ought to do.” If we frame it within the holy disciplines of prayer and fasting, and if we ground it in gratitude for who God is and what God has done for not only us but those who came before us, almsgiving can become a joyful practice for us as individuals and us as a community. “Then [we], together with those who reside in our community and beyond, shall celebrate with all the bounty that the Lord our God has given to us and to our house.”

The Rev’d Richard G. Proctor, OA CtK Episcopal Church Ash Wednesday: 3.2.22

I’ll never forget one night when I was living and going to seminary in New York City. It had begun to rain, so I was hurrying down 20th Street toward the entrance gate to General Seminary, so I could get back to the shelter of my dorm room. But as I was approaching the gate to the seminary, I saw - out of the corner of my eye - a taxicab pulled over to the curb, and its driver leaning down beside his car. Bummer, I thought to myself. That cabbie has flat tire and has to change it in this downpour. And for a cab driver, lost time is lost money. And then I thought to myself, “Why, oh God, did you have to place me in this classic moral predicament tonight, in the pouring rain, right outside the walls of my seminary campus?!” There is no way I can hurry inside to my warm, dry dorm room, while this cab driver is losing money by the minute while he changes his tire in the rain. So, in a split second, somehow, my sense of solidarity with humankind overcame my instinct for self-preservation, and I stopped to help the guy change his tire. But as I got closer, I realized something was a little bit odd. This man had pulled a mat out of his car to kneel on while he changed his tire. But wait a minute...there was no jack, the trunk wasn’t open, and no spare tire in sight. And just as I was about to inquire about what had happened, and how I could help, I realized that the cab driver didn’t have a flat tire, or any sort of car trouble for that matter. He was simply praying.  Right there in the pouring down rain, on the sidewalk of 20th Street in New York City. I guess he realized it was that time of day, so he pulled over his cab, pulled out his prayer rug, spread it on the sidewalk, and began saying his prayers to Allah. I quickly diverted my trajectory back towards the seminary gate, amused at my small-town naïveté.  

When I got back to my room, I couldn’t get this encounter out of my mind.  I felt humbled by this faithful Muslim. Here I was, studying to become a priest – a spiritual leader in the community – and I knew good and well it was hard enough for me to get down on my knees in the cozy confines of my dorm room and pray once a day, much less to do so multiple times a day - rain or shine, wherever I happened to be or whatever I happened to be doing - and offer my whole self in prayer to God. 

With this story in mind, does today’s gospel lesson set me free from any guilt or shame I was feeling? Can I let myself off the hook by remembering that Jesus said, “Beware of practicing your piety before others in order to be seen by them; for then you have no reward from your father in heaven… And whenever you pray, do not be like the hypocrites; for they love to stand and pray in the synagogues and at the street corners, so that they may be seen by others… But whenever you pray, go into your room and shut the door and pray to your Father who is in secret; and your Father who sees in secret will reward you.” Can we lean on this passage from Matthew to relieve us of any sense of responsibility of outwardly displaying our faith more publicly and more often like this cab driver in New York City? And if this passage frees us of such a responsibility, why is it that on Ash Wednesday - perhaps the one day that we do go public with our faith, wearing crosses of ash on our foreheads at the grocery store, the doctor’s office, at work, or at school – why is it on this one day that we are given this lesson from the whole breadth of our holy scriptures? To most of us, it seems counterintuitive. And it certainly makes the preacher’s a lot more challenging.

One thing to consider is who and what Jesus was addressing in when he was preaching the Sermon on the Mount, which is where this passage comes from. Though many folks want to think of him this way, Jesus wasn’t this mystic sage who wandered around speaking prescribed prophetic truths to whoever would listen. Rather, much of what Jesus said was in response to who and what he encountered in the moment. And obviously, when he was preaching the Sermon on the Mount, he had encountered a good bit of what he felt was inauthentic, public displays of piety. And it bothered him enough to where he decided that it would be better if these folks prayed in the privacy of their own home. Perhaps in the midst of their newfound solitude, they would be forced to contemplate the words they were praying.

So, what correctives would Jesus challenge us with today? Would he be put off by our public displays of piety here in Santa Rosa Beach, like he was with the Jews he encountered in Palestine? Would he recommend that we not put ashes on our foreheads and go out into the world showing where we’ve been and what we believe? I don’t think so. So while it may appear to be counterintuitive to have this reading from Matthew at a service where we mark our foreheads with the sign of the cross for the whole world to see, I think if we look more closely, we can see that Jesus is challenging his listeners – both then and today – to practice our faith in a manner that is authentic, genuine, but also a bit challenging, and possibly out of our comfort zones.  For some folks, particularly the ones Jesus was addressing, being alone in utter silence with only their thoughts, their feelings, and with only God Almighty as their audience, is utterly terrifying. But perhaps it is also what they need. And for others, perhaps many of us Episcopalians here today, the comfort zone is one of privacy and secrecy. So, the idea of going public with our faith is an unpleasant thought. 

I know public displays of faith weren’t part of my upbringing. So much so that when I was walking down 20th Street in New York last year, and saw a Muslim praying on the sidewalk, I thought he had a flat tire. Here he was, stopping everything, getting out of his car on a crowded New York street, in the pouring rain, and saying his prayers. And there I was, unlocking and entering the iron gate of General Seminary so I could return to the safety and security of the more private piety that we practiced inside. 

So perhaps the word for us this Ash Wednesday, and for this Lenten Season that is upon us, is Jesus’ invitation for us to step away from the expressions of piety that have become routine, safe, or even inauthentic for us. Maybe this is the season for us to explore new places and new mediums through which we can have a radically new and invigorating encounter with the Holiest of Holies in ways that we may have never imagined before.

The Rev’d Richard Gillespie Proctor - CtK Episcopal Church - Last Epiphany/Year C: 2/27/22

Our journey through the season of Epiphany comes to an end this week, and it does so in glorious fashion. Before we are plunged into the depths of the Lenten wilderness, we are taken to the mountaintop of glory. Our journey has included a series of divine revelations in each week’s Gospel lesson, beginning with the Magi’s discovery that the king of the Jews was none other than a little boy living in the insignificant town of Bethlehem. This weekly progression of revelations as to who the Messiah is - and what sort of things the Messiah says and does – culminate in today’s revelation on the mountaintop. We have engaged our Epiphany pilgrimage - to use St. Paul’s language - with “unveiled faces…being transformed … from one degree of glory to another.”

These degrees of glory have included the voice of God speaking from the heavens at the baptism of Jesus,

Jesus’ first miracle at the wedding in Cana,

his first sermon at the synagogue in Nazareth,

the time he slipped through the hands of an angry mob that was      trying to kill him,

a record-breaking fishing excursion,

and his Sermon on the Plain where he redefined who is blessed and what God’s love looks like.

And it is through these degrees of glory - from the physically miraculous to the socio-politically scandalous - that God has revealed to us the divinity of Christ.

But the ultimate revelation – for now at least – happens in our Gospel lesson for today when Jesus is transfigured in a light of glory on top of a mountain. While this dazzling moment marks the climatic end of the Season of Epiphany, it marks the half-way point of Jesus’ earthly ministry. And this half-way point was also the major turning point in Luke’s gospel narrative.

During the glorious mountaintop experience, Peter was so overwhelmed by the radiant power of God’s glory that he suggested that they all stay put. Who could blame him? Perhaps he thought that this was the end of their earthly journey together. And what a glorious ending it would have been!

But this was not the end of their time together. Chronologically speaking, it was the half-way point, but their descent down the mountain marked the beginning of their to journey to Jerusalem. It was the beginning of the end of Jesus’ earthly life. And God knew that before Jesus could begin this harrowing journey towards the Cross, his glory needed to be revealed to his followers. Peter, James, and John – Jesus’ “Executive Committee”– needed to be on board. So, any doubts of Who Jesus was and Who had sent him were erased atop that mountain…at least for the time being.

And such is the case for us. In the Christian tradition, the journey to Jerusalem – the journey to the Cross – is marked by the Season of Lent. But it would almost be a cruel joke to invite us to church on Ash Wednesday and be marked with a reminder of our mortality on our foreheads and then engage in a 40-day season of prayer, fasting, and penitence if we hadn’t engaged in the full experience of Epiphany. This two-month season has been preparing us for the journey to the Cross. We have been exposed to the first half of Jesus’ earthly life– from when he was a toddler, to his baptism, his first miracle, his first sermon, the calling of his first disciples … all the way up through today’s penultimate pre-resurrection moment in his life.

So, when we enter the wilderness with Jesus, and continue our journey with him, we do so knowing Who he is, where he is going, and why we are following him. Like Peter, when the going gets tough, we will wonder why we didn’t remain atop the mountain where the light was bright and the company was good. And like Peter, we will be tempted to abandon Jesus as our journey draws closer to the cross. But unlike Peter, we have the benefit of hindsight. Our journey in the wilderness is not only illumined on the front end by the glow of the Transfiguration. It is illumined on the back end by the glow of the Resurrection. As we prepare for our wilderness journey together, let us remain in the Light today, and in the days to come. It will be this very Light that will see us through to the end.

Deacon Ed Richards' Sermon for 5 Epiphany: The Kind of Fishers God Calls Us to Be

          Although there have been many technological developments, fishing hasn’t really changed much in the last two thousand years. In spite of all our diesel-powered boats, radar, detailed and accurate charts of the sea, satellite-assisted navigation, and the like, fishing is still pretty much the same kind of activity it was in Jesus’ time.
          Fishing is about setting out on the water, about leaving the safety of the dry land and trusting the laws of physics and the goodness of God. It’s about hoping and praying for a good, bountiful catch – but not really being able to do a whole lot to make that happen.
          Compare this to farming. Farmers assure a good harvest mostly through hard work – careful preparation of the soil, proper nutrition and moisture, freedom from pests. The weather plays a part, of course, but it is only one of a very complex set of factors. And make no mistake, fishing is hard work, too: maintaining a boat, studying charts, baiting hooks, and repairing nets, just for a start. But in fishing, whether there are fish or whether there are none, whether the wind blows enough to move your sailboat or so much that your boat is capsized – these kinds of things are totally out of the control of the men and women fishing, aren’t they? And most of the factors in fishing are like that.
          In fact, in spite of all the technology, all the training, all the experience – fishing is still pretty much putting all your hope in God.
          The message is clear: just put your trust in God, and God will provide everything. We don’t have to cultivate the soil, or sew seed, or dig in fertilizer, or irrigate the crops, or spray for insects – we just have to trust.
          So, today’s gospel passage is a simple story with a clear message, right? It’s a metaphor that by extension is as much about us as it is about James and John and Simon Peter and Andrew. Just trust in God, who provides everything we need, and we will find the power and the strength to go and catch people, to make disciples of all nations, and to build up the church through our efforts.
          Of course, that’s the way we’d like it to be: all neat and clean, and wrapped up so nicely. We trust and God provides. What more could we ask for?
          But fishing, well, it’s more than just a plentiful catch isn’t it? Sometimes, there are no fish at all. Frequently, there are tremendous risks and great danger. And always there is a great deal of pain and suffering.
          A few years back, there was a movie called The Perfect Storm, based on a novel by the same name. Did any of you see it or read the book? It’s about a small New England fishing town, and the relentless efforts of the fishing community to remain economically viable. It’s about facing amazing challenges, and about the unfairness of life – why did they catch so many fish while we caught so few? It’s about women and children waiting on land for news of loved ones still out at sea during rough weather. It’s a poignant depiction of the human drama – of love and loss, of work and struggle, of success and challenge and joy.
          The movie depicts modern-day, deep-sea fishing in graphic detail. We see large, elegant, graceful swordfish – not caught in a net and quietly surrendering to their fate, but impaled on large and painful hooks; painfully dragged aboard ship; beaten, stabbed, and even shot by the crew in a frenzied and violent struggle.
          And being gentle doesn’t help: then they are attacked by sharks – on the very deck of their boat – hit by the boom, thrown overboard, and even caught in the worst net of all: the pain suffered at the hands of a fellow human being.
          The movie, which is well worth seeing, ends with the amazing and defiant actions of one captain and a brave crew, who seek swift passage home with an abundant catch of swordfish – more than they could ask or imagine – and instead confront a storm of unbelievable proportion. Intent on offering their abundant harvest to the people on land, and reveling in their amazing bounty, the crew instead give their lives to the majesty of the sea, never returning from their valiant journey.
          Let’s face it, fishing is cruel – both to the fish and to those who do the fishing. Fishing is not a pretty story about evangelism or a miracle about feeding thousands; it’s about struggle and pain, challenge and hope, success and failure, life and death, sacrifice and joy, magnificent beauty and unimaginable ugliness.
          And if this gospel passage is about us and our efforts to build up Christ’s body the church – is this who God wants us to be? Is this who we want to be?
          Do we really want to lay out bait for people – not enough to sustain them, but just enough to get them painfully caught on a hook? Is it our vocation to pull them in, kicking and screaming – and to beat them into submission? And are we to revel in this catch? – tallying the number of fish we’ve managed to drag in, disemboweled, and put on ice, and then thanking God for this manifest blessing?
          Plus, aren’t we all just like that kind of “fish,” as well? Are we somehow different from those we seek to bring to Christ? Are we to terrify them by wielding our weapons until they believe? Now, there’s a revelation to be truly afraid of! There are doubtless some Christians who would say “yes” to all that. But are we Anglicans called to do this?
          Many of our fellow Christians think that we are called by God almighty to become fishers of men, to lay out our nets and haul in as many people as we can get, and to thank God for the abundance of the harvest – measured not in pounds of fish but in numbers of people.
          But in most of Anglicanism, we offer another vision of the church. Oh, we are truly glad when the church grows, and we thank God for that. We believe and proclaim that our dependence is on God alone. And we recognize that our life’s journey is not always one of hopeful expectation; that sometimes we come across times of struggle and even insurmountable odds.
          We hear this morning’s gospel passage and consider the frightening implications of those words: “From now on you will be catching people.” The pain that we may suffer or that may be inflicted at our hands, the tremendous risk ahead of us, the hard work that is ours – and ours alone – to do: we must face these are challenges. Because from now on we will be catching people.

          And yet we remember that we rely on God and God alone for the many good things we know in this life – indeed for life itself. And we pledge to work hard, to do the best we can – not because it will gain for us any reward, but in thanksgiving for our many blessings.
          We remember that Peter, when he experienced the miracle of the presence of God in Christ, when he saw his boat sinking from a catch of so many fish, fell down at Jesus’ feet and said, “Go away from me, for I am sinful.” We remember that we are like Peter.
          And we remember that this story reveals the miraculous power of Jesus Christ – a power as available and present and real to you and me, at this holy table, as to simple fishermen on the Sea of Gennesaret some two thousand years ago. We remember the power of God.
          And so we fear that we, like Peter, are sinful and unworthy of God’s love. But we also remember that Jesus replies to Peter’s fear and trembling – as indeed to ours – with these most comforting words: “Do not be afraid.” This comfort is ours, here and now, no less than it was theirs, out on that lake so very long ago.
          This insight does not assure us success; it reminds us of our salvation. This teaching does not give us license to abuse others in Christ’s name; it calls us to repent from the pain we inflict

          This power does not scare us into submission; it invites us, gently and lovingly, to give up our fears and trust in God.
          This power comes to us from God – by our very life, through our baptism, and again and again in this our simple ritual meal.
          This power comes to us every day, in ways we have not yet begun to understand or imagine.
          This power comes to us in our joy and in our pain, when we struggle and when we succeed.

          This power allows us to become more and more what God created us to be.
          This power is love.

          And with the power of love, we are able to withstand pain and torment, and we are able to revel in joy and bliss.

          With love, we can endure great trials, face new challenges, and even overcome death.
          With love, we can help to heal the world that suffers and hurts greatly.
          With love, we can trust that God will provide all that we truly need.
          With love, we can invite people to join with us in revealing more and more of the miraculous power that is God.

Amen.

The Rev’d Richard G. Proctor, OA

CtK Episcopal Church

4 Epiphany: 1/30/22

The theme of love runs through all of our readings this morning, not just Paul’s letter to the Corinthians. The sort of love we encounter in Jeremiah and Luke are less explicit than what Paul says about love, but I think they are related. Just as soon as Jeremiah might have been feeling special for having been known, formed, and chosen by God Almighty, he was told that he was appointed over nations and kingdoms, “to pluck up and to pull down, to destroy and to overthrow, to build and to plant.”  What part of plucking up, pulling down, destroying, or overthrowing is patient and kind? Perhaps Jeremiah’s calling was more about hoping and enduring all things.

And if we fast-forward to the Gospel of Luke, we also get a snapshot of a divine love that appears to be very different from what Paul describes.  Jesus and others are still gathered in his hometown synagogue in Nazareth, where he grew up. As we heard last week, Jesus must have been scheduled to be the lay reader, because he picked up the scroll and began reading from the book of Isaiah: “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to bring good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim release to the captives and recovery of sight to the blind, to let the oppressed go free, to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.” One could argue that for Isaiah, and for Jesus, this is what love looks like. To me, the only thing more scandalous than this prophecy from Isaiah is that Jesus had the audacity to claim that “Today, this scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing.” But oddly enough, this claim by Jesus didn’t upset the gathered community. Quite the contrary - Luke tells us that “all spoke well of [Jesus] and were amazed at the gracious words that came from his mouth.” They were a little bit surprised, as they were heard asking, “Is not this Joseph’s son?” But they didn’t appear to be scandalized by Jesus’ proclamation of good news to the poor. 

But what happens next with Jesus and the crowd at the synagogue is telling. For some reason, just when Jesus had the crowd amazed and speaking well of him, he hits them with this: “Doubtless you will quote to me this proverb, ‘Doctor, cure yourself!’ And you will say, ‘Do here also in your hometown the things that we have heard you did at Capernaum.’” And then he follows that with, “Truly I tell you…” (And just as a side note, whenever you hear “Truly I tell you” in the Bible, most likely whoever is being truly spoken to isn’t going to like what is truly being said.)  And this case was no exception. “Truly I tell you, no prophet is accepted in the prophet’s hometown.” And then he goes on to say that Elijah was sent to the widow at Zarephath in Sidon, not the widows in Israel. And in the time of Elisha, out of all the lepers in Israel, the only one who was cleansed was Namaan the Syrian. Needless to say, with this number, the dance floor cleared. And Jesus lost his hometown crowd just as quickly as he won them over: “When they heard this, all in the synagogue were filled with rage.  They got up, drove him out of the town, and led him to the brow of the hill on which their town was built, so that they might hurl him off the cliff.” I wonder if Jesus, when he “passed through the midst of them and went on his way” remembered the Lord’s word to Jeremiah: “for you shall go to all whom I send you, and you shall speak whatever I command you. Do not be afraid of them, for I am with you to deliver you.” 

What happened here?  It sounds like Jesus was taking a page from Jeremiah’s playbook and heeding the Lord’s call to pluck up, pull down, destroy, and overthrow. Or at least stir things up in his hometown synagogue. Prophetic as they may have been, were these harsh words spoken by Jesus spoken out of love? Quite frankly, it doesn’t sound like it to me. Indeed, Jesus was known for his propensity of showing “tough love” as much or more than patient love or kind love. But the sort of love that is purely scandalous is the sort of love we encounter in scripture, particularly in Jesus’ life, death, and resurrection. Think about it. The whole notion of God becoming incarnate to live and die with and for us, and then rise from the dead is pure scandal. 

So, when we encounter a text like 1 Corinthians 13, we tend to forget the scandalous nature of it because we so often limit it to the context of those whom we already love. That’s why we read it at weddings. And that is not a bad thing. Believe me, as a parent of young children, it is hard to be patient and kind to those whom we love. But the true scandal comes in when we are called to love the widow at Zarephath in Sidon or the Syrian leper. Or when we are called to love the HIV-positive prostitute or the undocumented immigrant. Jesus spoke of a scandalous love that extended beyond the house of Israel, and it enraged those in the synagogue so much that they tried to kill Jesus, a member of their very own synagogue and community.

Several years ago, Emily and I went to see “Mountaintop” – a play that takes an imaginative look at the last night of Martin Luther King’s life. It was set in Memphis at the Hotel Lorraine, and the entire play consists of a long conversation that King has with a room service maid. At this point in his journey, King had broadened his focus to opposing the war in Vietnam and advocating for the poor. He was in the midst of planning another march on Washington – this time his dream was a multi-racial, multi-cultural gathering of Americans committed to demanding an end to poverty in the United States. A little more than two weeks before he was assassinated, King delivered a speech in Memphis where he reminded the listeners that Jesus tells a parable about a man named Dives who ends up going to Hell. Jesus tells us that the reason that Dives went to Hell was because he didn’t see the poor. King went on the say:

But there is nothing in that parable that says that Dives went to Hell because he was rich. Jesus never made a universal indictment against all wealth. It is true that one day a rich young ruler came before him talking about eternal life. And he advised him to sell all. But in that instance Jesus was prescribing individual surgery, and not setting forth a universal diagnosis.

Dives went to Hell because he passed by Lazarus every day, but he never really saw him. Dives went to Hell because he allowed Lazarus to become invisible. Dives went to Hell because he allowed the means by which he lived to outdistance the ends for which he lived. Dives went to Hell because he maximized the minimum, and minimized the maximum. Dives finally went to Hell because he wanted to be a conscientious objector in the war against poverty.

And if this makes you as uncomfortable as it makes me, King continued with his tough love for his country when he said,

And I come by here to say that America too is going to Hell, if we don't use her wealth. If America does not use her vast resources of wealth to end poverty, to make it possible for all of God's children to have the basic necessities of life, she too will go to Hell.

The Civil Rights Movement didn’t get King killed. It was the war on poverty, and speeches like this that got him killed. King began invoking Holy Scripture and parables told by Jesus in his fight on behalf of the poor. And then, King began making prophecies of his own, like the startling one we just heard. And this is when the many folks got really uncomfortable. Two weeks after this prophecy about the fate of America, King was “driven out of the town and hurled off the cliff – shot on the balcony of the Hotel Lorraine. Unlike Jesus, King was unable to “pass through the midst of them and be on his way.” King’s time had come. 

In this play that depicted the last night of King’s life, the room service maid tells King that the difference between the two of them was that he had been able to find a way to love his enemies. She admitted that she was unable to do that – that she’d just assume resort to violent protest to bring about change in America. I was struck by how she was able to see the love in King’s actions, because though he was nonviolent, his recent speech in Memphis sure didn’t sound patient or kind. But this room service maid was struck by how King was able to love the very country that he was condemning. 

Jesus loved the folks gathered at his synagogue – the very folks that tried to throw him off a cliff. Jesus loved Israel – Pharisees, scribes, chief priests and all. And Jesus loves each and every one of us. But Jesus’ love for the synagogue, for Israel, and for us isn’t a sentimental love. It is not simply about being tolerant or inclusive. And it is not cheap grace. Jesus’ love “rejoices in the truth. It bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. [And Jesus’] love never ends.” 

Paul tells us that this “love is patient and kind.” But Jesus’ love can also be tough love, and difficult for us to embrace, imitate, and follow. But with God as my witness, oftentimes it is the tough love that has brought about the greatest transformation in me. I will never be as prophetic, faithful, or courageous as the Apostle Paul or Martin Luther King, Jr. Thanks be to God I don’t have to be for God to still love me. But that doesn’t mean that God still doesn’t command me to “put an end to my childish ways” and abide in God’s transformative love. I am grateful that this God who calls me this sort of radical love is a God who is also patient and kind. Because it is only by God’s grace that I stand a chance.